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Akamai gives Orange’s and T-Systems’ WAN services a new lease of life

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Summary

Orange Business Services and T-Systems have separately enlisted Akamai to extend their managed VPN services by offering a new form of optimized Internet WAN service for enterprise network users. The emerging hybrid WAN is an important addition to the CIO’s range of advanced global network options, but different telco offers will need to be evaluated for their individual benefits.

Hybrid WAN could provide benefits to enterprise

Orange Business Services has announced Business VPN Internet Accelerate (BVIA), an “optimized Internet transport” service. Meanwhile T-Systems has announced an enhanced business IP VPN service for multinational companies based on “optimized enterprise networking over the Internet.” Both are using Akamai’s Intelligent Platform to extend their existing MPLS-based managed VPN services across the Internet, but with network quality of service factored in. Both are important additions to the range of options that enterprise network managers and CIOs have when looking to extend their corporate network reach quickly and securely and manage burgeoning Internet traffic.

Other telecoms operators will follow suit, but not all new hybrid WANs will be the same, at least to begin with. Orange Business Services is highlighting the very low latency of its offer, with pilot transmissions 10-times faster than “bare” Internet connections on a 100Mbps link from Singapore to Europe. Applications performance management (APM) will be restricted to “core applications that might be optimized for Internet use,” taking advantage of Akamai’s own APM tools. T-Systems has put less emphasis on speed, although it points to the shortened Internet-hop gains that Akamai’s cloud networking will bring to Orange and T-Systems users alike. Instead it says that its customers will get performance guarantees for all applications in a managed service. The provider has engineered a hermetically sealed applications package that Akamai can deliver without deep packet inspection or similar investigations that might inhibit some users.

Telecoms managers and CIOs at large enterprises and MNCs should examine these new offers closely for the benefits they may provide in terms of supporting their global ICT services. Cost savings is an obvious potential benefit. Orange Business Services says users will get more bandwidth per dollar and a more flexible per-site, per-bandwidth charging model. T-Systems is more vocal about “new services that will be enabled” and its full-encrypted applications delivery, so the cost savings may be less immediate. One reason could be network reach: BVIA is connected from 90 points of presence in the Orange Business Services network, with what sounds like an emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region; T-Systems says it is “completely global” with Akamai.

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